This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Friends, listeners, community, members of the revolution. Hey, what's up? Chris Guillebeau here. You are listening to Side Hustle School. The only program in the universe bringing you daily stories, inspiration, questions and answers, throwback segments, looking at people we featured in years past.
We have been doing this for more than 1,200 days in a row, actually going on 1,300 days here. How about that? That's crazy. And I am so grateful for our community. I'm so grateful for everybody out there who is trying different stuff, experimenting.
Speaking of experiments, I recently finished a 30-day experiment of going live on YouTube to teach a short lesson and answer questions every day. What did I learn and what would I do differently? Well, overall, it was a lot of fun. You can still see the whole thing if you'd like, or any particular episode, including a number of mistakes as I learned along the way. It was kind of interesting and fun and scary to learn in real time, but no regrets there.
Definitely did learn a lot. I'm happy to share some of those lessons. Today's caller has a question about that experience and her own efforts at YouTube. So we're gonna hear from her. After this, shout out to our sponsor.
What have we learned from YouTube Live? Stay tuned. [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Jenny from Boulder and hope you're doing well during these strange times. I've been listening to the show for the past two years and I love the new format. I saw that you launched a new YouTube channel and already have a lot of people watching.
What have you learned so far? I've been trying to share videos of my banking process, but no one is really paying attention. Also, what's the difference between YouTube Live and regular YouTube? It looks like you're mostly doing live. Is that better?
Thanks and take care. [Music]
Thank you so much, Jenny. I appreciate the message. I appreciate the question. And best of luck with your YouTube channel as well.
I don't think I got a link in the message. So listeners, whenever you leave me a question, feel free to include a link to your project, to your website, whatever, so I can promote it and hopefully bring you some more attention. But the question is still good, so we can talk about it and hopefully it will be helpful. First of all, a disclaimer, like I am an advanced beginner at this. And by advanced beginner, I mean I have some experience, like I've been doing other stuff, obviously for a long time, but I'm definitely not a YouTube expert by any means.
There are a number of other people out there who are doing much better job with this. Shout out to Pat Flynn. He's been a long time friend of mine. He does a good job at everything he does. So his YouTube channel is fantastic, just to name one.
But I'll give you a couple of things that I learned through that process. And let's also answer that question about YouTube Live versus I think you said regular YouTube. I'm not sure if it's actually called anything different, just YouTube Classic versus YouTube Live. So for me, I knew I couldn't do a good job with produced YouTube content. Those are like your normal YouTube videos.
You go there, it's been produced in advance. The videos that do well tend to have a lot of production efforts. It's a high bar to succeed in. And so for me, that's why I focused entirely on the live option, which is just as it sounds, it's a live stream. So it's happening on the fly.
There's not a chance to go and edit stuff. You just have to go for it basically. And so in some ways it's a little bit scary, as I said, but it also allows for a more organic flow where mistakes are part of the experience, especially if other people are watching and participating in the chat. So let's see, three things I learned through YouTube Live. Number one, practice is key for sure.
Just practice is so important. And of course, I prepared and rehearsed for all of my lessons and such. But at the same time, there was a bit of a technical bar that I had to kind of overcome or learn about just some different software and such. And so I often found myself, even if I allocated a lot of time in advance to work on the lesson, I ended up spending a lot of that time troubleshooting or fixing something that wasn't working, trying to figure out how to do something with one of the parts of the software, which is actually like three or four different programs that I use to kind of make it all work together. So it's tricky because you wanna do things with excellence, but you also have to work with what you got.
And so doing it live was interesting because like I said, I'm doing it live at 9 a.m. Pacific time every day, and that's what I did. I wasn't ready several times when 9 a.m. rolled around, but I just had to go for it. So practice is key.
And then related to that, learning the different software does take a good amount of time. I started with OBS, Open Broadcaster System, Open Broadcasting System, one of those. And then midway through, I switched to a program called Ecamm Live. And now OBS is Mac, Windows, Linux, all the systems, all the platforms. Ecamm Live is Mac only, but I ended up liking it a lot better.
Either way, I would say there's still a learning curve. So you definitely want to spend some time watching other YouTube videos on how to make YouTube videos and just learning as much as you can. And then last but not least, Jenny mentioned something about how she's sharing videos of her baking process, but no one's really paying attention. Well, like a lot of other things, YouTube is a long game. And the algorithm can be a little mysterious.
I definitely didn't have a large number of people watching most days, which is probably for the better since I was learning. And at midpoint, or maybe like towards the end, last week I started re-streaming to Facebook and Periscope. So I would broadcast to YouTube, but then I figured out a way to re-stream the same content to Facebook and Periscope, where I have a bigger audience, definitely ended up reaching a lot more people that way. But I didn't really crack the YouTube code in the first 30 days. So it is a long game.
If it's not working at first, I would say sometimes you just have to keep putting out content. And of course you can adjust, you can learn as you go, but a lot of people who are successful just kind of keep doing it. They keep making those weekly videos, or in some cases, daily videos. And you lose track of them, and you go back and look three months later, and you're like, oh, they kind of blew up here. And sometimes it is just a question of that algorithm.
So thank you again, Jenny, for the question. I'm now live streaming once a week, by the way. I'm not doing it every day, but I am doing it once a week. You can follow my channel at youtube.com/chrisguillebeau, where you can subscribe for updates. And if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
We are featuring them throughout the year. So as I said, be sure to include your link if you have one. Let me know what's going on with you and how we can best be of service. I am cheering you on, whatever you're up to, in this interesting time. Know that there is a whole community of people out there who are all trying to do something similar.
It might not be a YouTube channel, but they're all trying to create something to bring more security for themselves, and perhaps to share a message with the world. So thank you for listening. Thank you for investing your time, and do come back tomorrow. All right, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Sydustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
